Is the US Ready for Its First Female President?

In her own words, she put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling in 2008 but was not able to shatter it. Hillary Clinton will almost certainly try to win the White House again in 2016. Four super PACs, the financial monsters created by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, are already on the warpath. And the “Invisible Primary” — the one where candidates fill their war chests — has never started so early. Iowa, which is traditionally the first state where electoral caucuses are held during election years, has been visited by an unprecedented number of putative candidates … two years before the process officially begins. Meanwhile, Republicans are struggling to find a candidate to unite the party after Chris Christie’s candidacy imploded, and Democrats seem increasingly convinced that Hillary Clinton will be nominated — with 73 percent of Democratic voters. Even John McCain, who was defeated by Barack Obama in 2008, said he was sure “HRC” (Hillary Rodham Clinton) would win. That’s very telling. So, is the United States ready for its first female president?

Ms.-ter President?

Over half of the American electorate and the majority of registered voters are women. In every presidential election since 1996, they have voted more often than men — by a 4-point difference on average, and close to 9 points in the African-American community. They have strongly favored Democrats since 1980, and the party knows it. They have frequently used the “war against women” in their debates against the Republican Party. New laws restricting abortion — in Texas and in 26 other states, which affect 53 percent of American women — seem to prove them right. Despite the salience of the culture wars, the next presidential election could be nothing short of revolutionary. But there could still be a long way to go; Laura Clay became the first woman to be nominated at a national convention in 1920. In 1984 and 2008 respectively, Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin were the first female vice-presidential nominations for the Democrats and Republicans. Nearly a century later, in 2008, Hillary Clinton rose to become the first female potential presidential candidate and was “nearly” nominated by a party likely to win the Oval Office.

The Shatterproof Glass Ceiling

Although the idea of a female president has made strong inroads over the past 20 years — an EMILY’s List survey indicated that 90 percent were in favor — these numbers have not changed since 2008. That year, Americans were more comfortable voting for a president of color (Obama) than a president in his 70s (McCain). If Hillary were elected, in January 2017, she would be nine months shy of her 70th birthday. But more importantly, female voters cannot be taken for granted; during the 2008 Democratic primaries, women donated twice as much to Obama than to Hillary Clinton. There was no direct Clinton-Palin effect on the glass ceiling in Washington; women are still few and far between in the “boys’ club” of America’s federal executive branch. There were only 27 female cabinet members between 1933 and 2004, and women were even sparser in governmental functions; they were filled by five out of these 27 women in 80 years. Only 19 percent of members of Congress are women; even the media only depicts women as incidental presidents — winning power after the elected president suffers an accident, like in 2005’s “Commander-in-Chief,” and by always being second-in-command, such as 2012’s “Veep.”

In contrast to Barack Obama, who prevaricates and calculates, Hillary Clinton has an active and involved presidential style that Robert Gates himself (secretary of defense under George W. Bush and Obama) praised in his memoir. Her vision is defined less by domestic politics than her desire to assert the central role of the U.S. in the world. Republicans will certainly bring up the death of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi often, but it remains that her popularity has increased with the American public since 2008. At the time, 53 percent of citizens found her “unlikeable;” today, 57 percent believe this is “does not apply.” In that sense, her potential as a presidential candidate and her leadership are not in question. She is even considered capable of assuming the historically defined masculine aspects of the presidency.

The current status of Republicans being what it is, her vulnerability lies within the Democratic Party. The divisions that tore it apart during the 2008 primaries have not disappeared. American political parties are large coalitions stretched over several political time zones. Though nothing is stopping HRC’s nomination from being a consensus — but the illusion of consensus cost Nixon dearly in 1960 — Democratic primaries usually have several candidates when not re-nominating an incumbent president, with an average of 3.5 since 1948, according to Larry Sabato. And thus, multiple factions can arise; opposition could come from the left or from millennials who thought they had unseated baby boomers by electing Barack Obama. In “Hillaryland,” the loyalty-based overlapping circles within the Clintonian establishment, there is the risk of insularity that plagued Mitt Romney and of being stuck with the “backward-looking” label tied to Bill. Thus, Hillary Clinton must become less Clinton and more “HRC” to win the hearts of her troops before conquering the country.